


Gravitational Constants

by airplanejam



Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon), Marvel 616, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23619076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airplanejam/pseuds/airplanejam
Summary: The first thing he notices as he scans the room is that Stark ishandsome. It’s distant, in the back of his head, the way a thought that’s crossed your mind a hundred times before is, but this is new and he’s seen Tony Stark before. Everyone has. Iron Man is always on the TV, hacking into this or that, exposing corruption and sabotaging politicians. He has surprisingly warm brown eyes and a sharply trimmed goatee. A couple of black hairs escape from under the armor to fall across his forehead.“I just lost about a thousand bets,” Falcon says, still gawking at Steve.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 13
Kudos: 112





	Gravitational Constants

**Author's Note:**

> this is set in "Dark Avengers" (s2e9) of Avengers Assemble in which the Squadron Supreme has used the Reality Stone to create a fake reality. here, the Avengers don't know each other, they're all villains, and the Squadron are the heroes of NYC. while fighting them, Iron Man catches a glance into the real universe, where he sees the Avengers together as heroes. this story picks up from where Tony begins gathering all the members of the Avengers to convince them to work together.
> 
> also: AA does not mention how they found Steve in the ice so i stole that part from 616.
> 
>   
> enjoy :)

The others are standing around the table discussing him, debating the validity of his existence and suddenly the Iron Man has a repulsor to Falcon’s face, and there’s nothing to be done about it.

Steve throws the shield on pure instinct to knock away Iron Man’s gauntlet and a second later he’s giving up his cover, stepping forward into the lit room of the airship to catch it on the rebound.

The group turns to gape at him (except for Stark, who just smirks) and the first thing Steve notices as he scans the room is that Stark is _handsome_. It’s distant, in the back of his head, the way a thought that’s crossed your mind a hundred times before is, but this is new and he’s seen Tony Stark before. Everyone has. Iron Man is always on the TV, hacking into this or that, exposing corruption and sabotaging politicians. He has surprisingly warm brown eyes and a sharply trimmed goatee. A couple of black hairs escape from under the armor to fall across his forehead.

“I just lost about a thousand bets,” Falcon says, still gawking at Steve.

Steve ignores him. He knows his legacy. Amazing tactician. Formidable villain. He can count on one hand the number of times anyone has seen his face as the Captain. His work is more of the subtle kind - he doesn’t boast his crimes like some of the others here do, and he’s never on the scene when they’re discovered.

“What’s your endgame, Stark?” he says.

Stark raises an eyebrow at Steve. “You tell me. What made you save Falcon?”

He looks around again, evaluating these villains on principle. He could take them, if needed. They're new to villainy for the most part. Falcon is young and naive. Hawkeye will be an easy takedown without his infamous arrows. Widow will be harder, but he’s prepared to handle her hand-to-hand. Thor and Hulk are definitely stronger than him, so distraction should be the best strategy. Iron Man, on the other hand…

Iron Man will be a challenge.

There’s something, again, knocking at the back of his mind. He doesn’t want to fight these people. He wants to trust them. “I don’t know,” he says. “Muscle memory, maybe. It feels like we—”

“Worked together before?” Stark interrupts. “I rest my case,” he announces to the others.

Steve steps closer. “I’ve had my suspicions for a long time. I feel forced to be something I’m not. A lot of things feel wrong to me. I didn’t know who to trust. . .”

“You want to do some trust exercises?” Stark says. “Fall backwards. I’ll catch you.” He’s still looking at Steve like that, leering, and for some reason it doesn’t itch at him the way it should. Steve should be annoyed. Stark is clearly every bit the asshole billioniare, but there’s something about him that makes Steve want to grin back, respond, _I’m not the one that’s gonna be falling, Tony_.

Instead, he says, “You’re not seeing the whole picture, Stark.” And they get to work.

...

It’s a couple of hours later on the ship and they’ve determined that the image Stark saw when fighting the Squadron was apparently a separate reality. This universe, or perhaps more accurately, this stream of reality, is an illusion crafted by the Reality Stone, which Stark, Falcon, and Thor all declare they have been after. Spectrum has the stone, as the scientist of the Squadron, and their goal seems to be eliminating this group—Steve’s not entirely sure what to call them. Teammates? Partners?

They’re heroes in this other universe. They live together in New York City and save the world on Tuesdays. They seem like a family. They seem like they love each other.

Steve privately wonders what Stark is to him in this alternate version of their lives. He’s standing off to Steve’s left, discussing something with Falcon and gesturing wildly at a holographic screen.

He wonders what Stark’s goatee would feel like against his face. He wonders if Stark is talkative and arrogant all the time, if he’d act the same way with Steve’s hand down his pants, with his cock in Steve’s mouth—

And there’s a thought Steve’s never had. _Never had in this reality,_ he corrects himself.

Suddenly, the ship jerks, jolting Steve out of his own thoughts, and it turns out that Nighthawk has acquired a jet and is now aggressively and quite excessively shooting at them. That confirms that theory, then. The Squadron is certainly eager to get rid of them.

The ship jars again, and Steve has that same instinct in him, the same muscle memory as before that leads him straight to the co-pilot’s seat next to Widow. Hulk and Thor stay standing, having something to prove to each other (or perhaps they just don’t fit in the seats), while Stark and Barton buckle in behind.

Widow is an exceptional pilot even in Stark’s unfamiliar ship, and it takes her nothing more than a few minutes to shake and then entirely destroy Nighthawk’s jet. Unfortunately, Nighthawk can fly.

Nighthawk flaps his way up to their windshield and lands with his ugly color scheme and ridiculous suit. He drops something small and black and blinking onto the roof, winks at them through the clear screen and he’s off as quick as he came.

Hawkeye scrambles out of his seat to get a closer look. “That’s a bomb! Abandon ship!” he yells. “I’m going first.”

“No!” Steve says, glaring. “That would blow up half the city if we dropped it!”

“And we care why?” Hawkeye says.

“We’re all on the most wanted list,” Stark begins, thoughtfully, before Steve can get a word in. “But have any of us taken a life? I don’t think we’re actually any good at being bad guys. We’re good people.” He takes a deep breath and looks away, up at the top of the ship where the bomb is, ticking persistently. His expression tightens and then relaxes, so fast that Steve isn’t sure if he imagined it. He turns towards the door.

Steve is surprised by how easy he reads him. He knows exactly what Iron Man is thinking. He’s going to do what he always does, go up there and steal away the bomb, die saving the team like the self-sacrificing idiot that he is. “It’ll destroy you!” Steve shouts, grabbing at his shoulder.

“Only if this is reality, which it’s not.” Stark - _Tony_ \- looks at Steve’s hand on his shoulder and then looks him square in the eye. His voice is calm. “Right?”

Don’t do this, Steve wants to say. If the Squadron’s just messing with them, if they’ve got it all wrong, he doesn’t want it to end like this, with Tony rushing a bomb away from these maybe-friends, when there’s something so strong between them that might be — that might have been — that maybe is, and what is he going to do without his best friend? And, and even if they’re right, if their whole lives have just been some sort of projected reality from a stupid yellow crystal, what if Tony’s death is permanent? It should be Steve doing this.

But Steve can’t fly. He grits his teeth. There has to be a better solution. One where they all survive.

“You’re betting your life on that?” Barton says to Tony, incredulous.

“I’m betting my life on all of you,” Tony responds loudly, over the ticking of the bomb. “There’s no time to defuse it right now, and we’re not letting civilians die. I know you’re all heroes. Prove me right.” His jaw is set and his face is resolved into something determined. That’s stubborn Tony, Tony who’s not going to change his mind. He puts the faceplate down, and before Steve can grab him or tackle him to the floor or _stop him_ he’s out the door of the ship, going up, up, up with the bomb cradled to his chest and he’s four hundred, six hundred, one thousand feet away from them, so far the blue from his boots is not even visible anymore when it blows.

The explosion is bright orange and red, like the red from Tony’s armor except that this Tony was just wearing blue, wasn’t he, and Steve’s hit with a pang of grief so sharp and cutting that he nearly stumbles.

“Odin’s beard!” says Thor, and then no one says anything.

…

They barely land the ship. Steve tucks away his heartbreak for the Iron Man that he hasn’t known because he knows how to do that. Reality or not, he’s a soldier. He knows how to compartmentalize and this band of misfits, as Barton called them, need a leader. Tony won’t have died for nothing. He’ll be sure of it. If there’s one thing that’s felt right to him in this world, it’s here and it’s now. He'll have time to breakdown about Tony later. It doesn't stop his throat from tightening, though.

“I know some of you may doubt that we’re the good guys,” Steve starts, because this team seems like it needs a pep talk and a serious morale-boost, “but deep down you all know something’s wrong here. Taking down the squadron isn’t only justice. The fate of the entire world is in our hands. Tony had faith in us. Let’s put our faith in him.” And then, because he heard it in the recordings of the other world, and because it feels right, he adds “Avengers, assemble!”

He throws himself into strategy for the rest of the night. He _doesn’t_ think about Tony. Natasha sits with him, offers careful suggestions and improvements, and Sam rewires all their comms so they can communicate. Clint takes a nap, and Hulk and Thor arm wrestle a few hundred times. By the time the moon is down again, they’ve got a plan.

The heavy hitters, clearly Hulk and Thor, will distract part of the Squadron. Widow and Hawkeye will sneak into their tower. Steve’s mapped out all the right vents and hallways to get in unnoticed. Once they’ve found Spectrum and therefore the Reality Stone, Falcon will fly Steve in directly to meet up with the other two and they’ll take it from there.

It all goes according to plan. Hulk throws a couple of vehicles (buses, trucks, automobiles) at the Squadron’s tower and Thor follows him up with Mjolnir. Nat and Clint locate the room with no difficulties. Sam and Steve arrive through a window and alarms don’t even go off. It’s almost too easy.

A peek into the room reveals that Spectrum and Nighthawk are just around the corner from them, fiddling with some machine and bickering with each other. It’s a large space with a high ceiling and windows make up the entirety of the right wall. They’re eighty, maybe ninety, stories above the city streets, and it would be a beautiful view if not for the current situation. There’s a huge contraption in the center, well over ten feet tall, which Spectrum and Nighthawk are situated around. Right there in Spectrum’s gloved hand, Steve can make out the yellow shine of the Reality Stone.

The rest of the Squadron seems to be absent because Princess and Speed Demon are off fighting Thor and Hulk outside the tower and Hyperion—

Wait. Where’s Hyperion?

Hyperion materializes out of seemingly _fucking nowhere_ and before any of them can react, he’s moving.

Steve gets slammed into the far wall hard enough that his vision goes fuzzy for a minute, and the others are equally thrown. Falcon lands violently against the windows, a crack spreading from his point of impact, and Widow and Hawkeye crash against the floor, grunting. They’ve certainly lost the element of surprise.

Nighthawk looks up at the commotion, startled. “Keep working on the Stone!” he shouts to Spectrum, who rolls his eyes but nods.

Sam hasn’t yet recovered from Hyperion’s hit so he doesn’t see Nighthawk flying towards him. “Falcon!” Steve yells, trying to get his attention, but it’s no use.Nighthawk whips four gold stars at Sam, lightning-fast, and three of them bounce harmlessly off of Sam’s armored wings but the last one slices into his abdomen as he doubles over, coughing and groaning.

Hyperion aims his laser eyes at Widow from the entrance to the room. She narrowly manages to flip] out of the way. The beams shatter the window and air temperature seems to drop twenty degrees, cooled by the outside.

Steve rights himself. They’re losing this fight and there’s not much time. Spectrum could erase them forever from reality in just a few minutes. They need to end this as fast as possible. They need to get home. He needs to get Tony back.

He aims his shield right for Spectrum’s hand where he carefully cradles the stone, and takes off running to where Sam is lying, clutching his wound. It’s a perfect shot.

“Jeez!” Spectrum yelps, flapping around his hand and dropping the stone. It skitters away from him.

Steve’s shield bounces off the far wall, angled so that it’ll reach Steve where he is next to Sam, but Hyperion intercepts it on the rebound. He holds it up to the light, examining it. It’s different now, from where the light of the stone touched it. The pattern is no longer black and white and striped. It’s got a shiny white star in the center surrounded with red and blue, and it’s just as it should be. That’s Captain America’s shield. That’s his shield.

Hyperion appears to be coming to the same conclusion as he is, except that he’s furious. He angrily waves the shield at Spectrum. “Do you see this? This reality is ripping! Do something, you absolute loon!” His eyes are red and wide and angry as he turns to Steve. It’s terrifying. “Want your shield?” he snarls. “Take it.”

He throws it inhumanly fast—faster than even Steve himself could throw it—and so hard that there’s no time to move. The shield hits him square in the center of the chest and sends him flying backwards, but there’s no wall behind him because the windows are shattered. He’s accelerating fast towards the cement. There’s no way he can survive a fall from this height. His skull will crack as soon as he makes impact, and he’ll be dead minutes, if not seconds, after.

It’s just like crashing his plane, he’s freezing this time around as well, except now there’s no chance of a miracle, and God, he doesn’t want it to be like this, Tony can’t have died just for Steve to fail him, the Squadron is too strong, and here he is, pathetically falling out of a building, fifty feet from death—

Metal arms, red and gold, wrap around him from behind and all of a sudden Steve is flying rather than falling. There’s a smile in Iron Man’s voice in Steve’s ear: “Trust exercise.”

“What happened?” Steve gasps, high on adrenaline and the relief of not being dead, of Tony not being dead. “How are you—where—a new rip in reality?”

“Told you if you fell backwards, I’d catch you,” Tony says instead of answering, except that this time there’s no other insinuation in his words. He sounds perfectly sincere and earnest. It has to be real. Tony’s here.

“Welcome back,” Steve pants, instead of anything that he’s thinking. It’ll have to wait til later.

…

With Tony back, the fight goes over much smoother. Thor and Hulk have tied down Speed Demon and knocked out Power Princess. Clint and Nat handle Hyperion, Tony takes Spectrum, and Steve snatches the stone out of Nighthawk’s hands.

He steps towards the center of the room, where Spectrum’s contraption still stands. There’s a hole in the center, shaped perfectly to fit the stone, so Steve pushes it gently inside, and he can see—

He can see their lives. Their real lives. He can see himself trying not to laugh as Clint and Thor flick peas into a snoring Hulk’s nose. He can see Falcon offering the team his mom’s freshly baked cookies, Natasha knocking him flat on his back in their training room, and Tony, there’s so many memories of Tony. Eating lunch with Tony down in the workshop, Tony presenting him with a new uniform, both proud and anxious ( _Do you like it, Cap?_ ), and Tony’s armored face, the first thing he saw out of the ice, Tony asleep, draped over his shoulder every Friday movie night, Tony.

There’s waves of yellow light pulsing out from the stone, and it’s like a wave of heat as they pass through him.

He looks down at himself and Steve’s back in his blue uniform, the right one, he now knows, and a glance at the rest of the team shows that they’re really back in the right reality.

They’ve won.

But then, super villains never really know when to quit, so when the Squadron slices their tower into two before fleeing, it’s not even a surprise. It’s not a big deal. They fix it. The tower is self-repairing (another one of Tony’s brilliant inventions, obviously) and it’s finally over.

...

The team is gathered around the stone for the usual post-battle briefing back in the workshop, except for Sam, who’s in the infirmary getting cleaned up, and Steve decides someone needs to say it, so he does.

“Tony, even though it was another reality, we’ll all remember what you did today. You were brave and you trusted when you didn’t even know us. You saved us, Shellhead.”

Natasha catches his eye across the table, eyebrow subtly raised, and her mouth ticks up at one side. She knows, then. Well, it’s not like Steve has been subtle.

“Yes, friend Tony!” booms Thor. “That was most noble of you!”

“Hulk agree,” says Hulk.

“I’d like to take the credit, guys, but all of you would have done the same,” Tony says, grinning. “We’re in this together.” And that’s Tony, isn’t it, never one to accept any genuine praise, selfless to a fault.

Later, after the rest of the Avengers file out of the room, Steve pulls Tony into a gentle kiss. It says everything that Steve needed to before. It says _you came back_ , and _you caught me when I fell_ , and _I’ve been falling for a long time_ and _catch me again_.

And when Tony kisses him back, it really feels like coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i love you all <3 kudos are always appreciated! 
> 
> ALSO: someone pls inform me abt how to find a beta bc i am. clueless. or comment if u would like to beta? i will love you forever. thank u.


End file.
